


practice makes perfect

by ottermo



Series: As Prompted [44]
Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: Gen, superhero au, the Elsters are supersiblings!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 13:23:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13858641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: Superhero AU. Being the older sister of an empath can be a lot of fun, but it does make it harder to keep your secret crush, well, secret.





	practice makes perfect

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Week 2, Day 5 of the Humans 4-Week Challenge. The prompt was “Superhero AU”

“Stop it, Maxie,” Niska murmured, giving her head a little shake as if that would dislodge him from her thoughts. “I’m trying to read. You’re distracting me.”

“Sorry,” he said, and she felt him retreat from her mind, not all the way, but so that she had to concentrate to notice him. “I didn’t even realise.” 

That was probably true. Max was a powerful empath, but he was only beginning to control his ability. He was young; he’d get there. Niska remembered the months it had taken her to stop disappearing involuntarily, or materialising in completely the wrong place. Max’s equivalent of that was clumsily stumbling into someone else’s brain when all he was trying to do was discern their mood. 

“I don’t think you were trying very hard to read, though,” Max said, with an impish smile.

Niska shot him a haughty look. “I told you, you were distracting me.”

“Yes, but not from reading.” He leaned closer to her. “I think you were thinking about Aaaaa-strid…” 

Niska teleported directly behind him and gave him a mostly-friendly shove. “Was not.” 

He made to shove her back, but she was too fast for him - she flitted invisibly to the other side of the room, and reappeared behind the table, her book still in her hand. 

“You definitely were!” He darted forward as if he was coming for her, an attempt Niska thought she could easily thwart by ‘porting back to the other end. When she rematerialised, though, he was standing right in front of her, and she realised he’d read her intentions slightly before she was even aware of them herself. 

“Nice,” she said, approvingly. He looked proud that he’d outwitted her. Niska used his diverted attention as a cover for her thoughts as she moved back over to the table. He chased her, and somewhere in the confusion a vase was swiped off the tabletop, bouncing off the hard leg of a chair and smashing into pieces. 

“Oops,” said Max, looking at it.

“What was that?” came Mia’s voice, from the next room. Immediately Niska disappeared, leaving Max to look up guiltily from the scene of the crime as his older sister entered. 

“We were just practising something,” Max said, sheepish. 

Mia raised her eyebrows. “Is that what you call it?”

Max watched as the broken pieces were whipped into the air, spinning in a little cloud of china fragments. Mia frowned for a moment, rotating them one by one until they made the perfect shape of the vase again, suspended in the air. She stretched out her arms, and the vase floated towards her. She took it, turning it around in her hands. “Hmm. Never mind. It wasn’t all that special.” 

“Fred can probably fix it,” said Max, hopefully. Their brother used his healing powers on living things, mainly, but he had been known to mend inanimate objects too, when the mood took him. 

“We can ask him,” Mia said, though for now she dropped the telekinetic link, and the vase shattered again, falling soundlessly this time onto a nearby shelf. “But you two should be more careful.” 

“Don’t blame Niska,” said Max. “She doesn’t know what she’s doing, she’s too lovesick.” 

He received a swat on the side of his head from an invisible hand.


End file.
